Comparative Study Between"Pashi" And "Pabushi"

Modal adverbs is a special class of adverbs in modern Chinese. They are characterized more abstractly and complicatedly in the meaning and usage. And those in the process of grammaticalization are more likely to cause difficulty in comprehension. From the view of current research, sufficient attention should be given to this field. In addition, there is a kind of redundant negation phenomena in language, this also causes the confusion of language learners. Therefore, this paper selects "Pashi"(怕是) and "Pabushi"(怕不是) group to make a synchronic and diachronic comparative study. This group of the modal adverbs is still in curing processes which express the same semantic meaning in a contradictory form.This article mainly includes six parts.The first chapter outlines the research methods and significance, research status and achievements.The second chapter uses grammaticalization and lexicalization theory to observe and study different sources of "Pashi"(怕是)and " Pabushi"((怕不是).Make the conclusion that the lexicalization of "Pashi"(怕是) built on grammaticalization related to "F-shi" curing process. While "Pabushi"(怕不是)is closely related to "Bushi"(不是) grammaticalizating from helping express rhetoricalquestion into the modal conposition. Tell differences in both historical sources apart have important effect on the synchronic comparative analysis.The third chapter compares mainly from four aspects, syntactic position, the ability as parts of a sentence after the match with other ingredients, the sentence category, co-occurrence rule of the typical modal particles in the end of sentence. And find that syntactic distribution of "Pashi"(怕是) wider than "Pabushi"(怕不是).The forth chapter,the differences of semantic interpretation,semantic context and semantic features are anayzed and compared between "Pashi"(怕是) and "Pabushi"(怕不是).First of all, we summarize and complement the meaning of the "Pashi"(怕是)and "Pabushi"(怕不是).Secondly, compare the semantic background of them, pointing out the main difference is when "Pabushi"(怕不是)express speculation,there has been an certain emotional tendency and the content of the speculation is mostly in contrast to or far more beyond the speaker’s expectation. Finally, on the semantic features, both have three main characteristics:speculative, uncertainty and conclusion uncertainty,but on the confidence level,"Pabushi"(怕不是)is slightly higher than "Pashi"(怕是), this is associated with the different sources.Because "Pabushi"(怕不是)developed from the rhetorical question, so certainty degree is higher.The fifth chapter mainly investigate and compare the the pragmatic features between the two. The commonnesses are:both of them have the function of subjective comments, the function of moderating the tone, the function of highlighting the focus,the function of evidentiality and the function of connecting the discourse. The differences between the two are in two points:first, in terms of the function of subjective comments, the subjectivity of "Pabushi"(怕不是)which contains redundant negation is far higher than that of "Pashi"(怕是).Second, in terms of evidentiality function, both of them convey uncertain messages, but overall, the certainty degree of "Pbushi"(怕不是)is slightly higher than the "Pashi"(怕是).Conclusion part of this paper summarizes the main content of the introduction, and also do statistical and analysis work on the situation of the number of "Pashi"(怕是)and "Pabushi"(怕不是)appearing in different periods.